Women in the Workplace 2025: C-Suite Glass Ceiling Persists

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Despite gains at the top of the tech ladder,  women in the workplace remain underrepresented in C-suite-level roles.

According to the Women in the Workplace Report 2024 from LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company, over the past four years, there has been notable progress, with the number of women in the tech C-suite increasing by 38% (+8 percentage points) since 2020. This encouraging trend underscores continued efforts to promote gender diversity at the leadership level.

However, the overall picture for women in management roles reflects persisting obstacles; at the beginning of 2024, women accounted for only 29% of C-suite positions.

In this article, we go into statistics on tech and Fortune 500 women executives in 2024, highlighting both the progress made and the persistent challenges that remain.

Key Takeaways

  • Techopedia explores women in the workplace statistics.
  • Women hold 29% of C-suite tech roles in 2024, with only 7% held by women of color.
  • In 2024, women held 10.4% of CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies, but only two CEOs were women of color.
  • Even with progress, gender and racial gaps still hold back the advancement of women executives.
  • Companies that focus on diversity and inclusion, including promoting women leaders in business, see better innovation and team performance.
  • Providing more opportunities for women in tech at all levels is key to breaking the glass ceiling and achieving true diversity in leadership.

Women in Leadership Roles: Trends in Tech

As we noted in our introduction, only 29% of C-suite tech roles were filled by women in 2024.

White women dominated this group with 22%, while women of color held only 7% of the roles – meaning that women made up roughly 1 in every 4 C-suite leaders in technology, with women of color accounting for an estimated 1 in every 14.

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This highlights a key gap in not only gender diversity but also racial diversity within gender representation.

Female Executives in Fortune 500 companies

This trend is particularly visible with Fortune 500 companies.

In 2024, women hold only 10.4% of CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies, a figure that has not changed since 2023.

While this number shows little progress over the past year, the current 52 female CEOs are more than double the number from six years ago. It’s also a huge leap from 1998, when only two women led Fortune 500 companies (+2500%).

Some of the most notable female executives in Fortune 500 companies include:

  • Karen Lynch of CVS Health, who leads the highest-ranking company at No. 6
  • Mary Barra of General Motors (No. 19)
  • Gail Boudreaux of Elevance Health (No. 20).

However, women of color are still very underrepresented, with only two acting as female executives in Fortune 500 companies:

  • Thasunda Brown Duckett of TIAA, with the company ranking at No. 96; and
  • Toni Townes-Whitley of SAIC (No. 479).

Although the overall percentage has remained steady, eight companies in the Fortune 500 for 2024 became women-led, with a mix of existing and newly appointed female CEOs. Here’s the breakdown:

  • Linda Rendle at Clorox (No. 485) and Heather Lavallee at Voya Financial (No. 487) were already leading their companies, but both businesses rejoined the Fortune 500 this year.
  • Six companies appointed new female CEOs:
    • Heidi Petz at Sherwin-Williams (No. 176), who took over the paint company.
    • Kim Dang at Kinder Morgan (No. 268), now leading the oil pipeline company.
    • Ariane Gorin at Expedia (No. 315), promoted to CEO after working at Expedia for Business.
    • Lori Koch at Dupont (No. 327), appointed as CEO as the company announced plans to split into three separate businesses.
    • Joanna Geraghty at JetBlue (No. 413), becoming the first woman to lead a major U.S. airline.
    • Adaire Fox-Martin at Equinix (No. 456), who began her role as CEO after her time at Google Cloud.

Despite the successes of women leaders in business, the larger issue remains: women executives, especially women of color, are still underrepresented.

For real progress to happen, companies need to support women in the workforce at all levels and strongly support their advancement into top roles.

The Benefits of Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

It has been proven, time and time again, that companies that aim for diversity, including women leaders in business, get the true and full benefits of a varied workforce.

It means hiring and keeping more people from underrepresented groups and using their unique knowledge and experiences to help the organization improve its work. This involves making them part of business processes rather than just showing off inclusivity.

Organizations that value different viewpoints allow their employees to share ideas freely, helping teams rethink how tasks are done and how to achieve their goals. Therefore, creating more opportunities for women in the workplace is key to fostering innovation.

Ultimately, the research shows that when organizations follow this diversity and inclusion strategy, their teams perform better than teams made up of the same types of people or diverse teams that do not choose to benefit from their members’ differences.

However, inclusion cannot happen without diversity, and vice versa — they go hand in hand. So, by overcoming the challenges for women in C-suite positions, businesses can benefit from diverse leadership.

The Bottom Line

The challenges of retaining diverse talent, likely due to a lack of inclusion, limit the pool of potential women executives, further exacerbating the underrepresentation of women, especially women of color.

Until companies address the inequity head-on, women in the workplace will continue to face an uphill battle toward achieving tech leadership positions – with women of color particularly absent from the C-suite.

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Maria Webb
Technology Journalist
Maria Webb
Technology Journalist

Maria is Techopedia's technology journalist with over five years of experience with a deep interest in AI and machine learning. She excels in data-driven journalism, making complex topics both accessible and engaging for her audience. Her work is also prominently featured on Eurostat. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Honors in English and a Master of Science in Strategic Management and Digital Marketing from the University of Malta. Maria's background includes journalism for Newsbook.com.mt, covering a range of topics from local events to international tech trends.